Archive for December, 2017

Check out the Richard Crouse Show on NewsTalk 1010 for December 9, 2017! This week Richard welcomes Nate Blakeslee, author of “American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West.” From the Penguin Random House website: “Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West.”

Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!: Each week on The Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Richard also lets you know what movies you’ll want to run to see and which movies you’ll want to wait for DVD release. Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed! Read Richard NewsTalk 1010 reviews HERE!

More Nicolas Cage films you won’t go see: The “Nouveau Shamanic” actor has no fewer than three films scheduled.

More men in tights: Look for spandex-clad superheroes in Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity Wars, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Aquaman to name just a few. There’s even some super duper animation coming in the form of The Incredibles 2.

More movies directed by women: The Kindergarten Teacher from Sara Colangelo, Jane Fonda in Five Acts by documentarian Susan Lacy and Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post are just three of the 16 female-led films screening at Sundance this year.

More of the Netflix logo: The streaming service will release more movies than almost all of the other major studios combined. Investing heavily in the theatrical productions, they will release upwards of 80 movies in 2018 at the cost of a whopping $8 billion.

A year of reckoning for Johnny Depp: With three films set for release and several others in production audiences will make it known whether or not they still care about the quirky movie king.

A new catchphrase: “Hugs not drugs,” from the movie Deadpool 2 will become 2018’s “Sorry not sorry!”

Of course, then there are the movies themselves.

Depending on your point of view, Fifty Shades Freed will either make you want to gag or want to wear a gag.

Fifteen years after Angelina Jolie hung up her Lara Croft combat boots, Tomb Raider returns with Alicia Vikander in the character’s trademarked tank top and ponytail. That’s great news for fans of the Swedish actress, less so for fans of new, original ideas.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a remake of a remake, comes to screens courtesy of Illumination Entertainment, the masterminds behind the Despicable Me movies. Does that mean the Whos of Whoville will be played by the jellybean-shaped Minions?

We’ll have to wait for breakout director Jordan Peele to step behind the camera again, but in 2018 he’s producing the Spike Lee-helmed Black Klansman and lending his voice to the puppet thriller Abruptio.

Ex Machina director Alex Garland returns to the big screen with the genre-twisting science/fantasy/action/horror film Annihilation based on a book by Jeff Vandermeer. The author is impressed by Garland’s work. “It was so tense our bodies felt sore and beat up afterwards,” he said. Sounds good to me.

Bradley Cooper will write, direct and star in the fourth remake of A Star is Born. Lady Gaga, who will be credited by her given name, Stefani Germanotta, sits in for Barbra Streisand, who sat in for Judy Garland who took over from the character’s originator, Janet Gaynor.

Don’t mind subtitles? Check out Loveless, a film from Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Russia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is the tale of a divorcing couple whose son disappears during one of their knock-down-drag-out arguments.

Want to take the kids to the flicks? Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 is an animated movie that is the first feature to include all four of Disney’s major brands, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Look for cameos from princesses Cinderella and Moana as well as C-3PO, Yoda and Iron Man.

Tags: 2018 Posted in Metro, Metro In Focus | Comments Off on Metro In Focus: 2018 will see more superheroes and $8B worth of Netflix films.

Richard and CTV NewsChannel anchor Beverly Thomson have a look at some of the best films of the year–“The Florida Project,” “Get Out” and more–and the worst of the year, “Fifty Shades Darker” and other garbage!

CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.

The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.

The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.

Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.

The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.

The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.

The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.

The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.

Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.

THE UGLY

Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.

EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING

mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?

Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.

“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.